It’s hard to believe that less than 50 years ago in Scotland, if you found yourself living in poor conditions or worse, homeless, you would have had next to no right to any public help or assistance. While we have achieved a lot in the decades since, we still have a long way left to go before Scotland has the rented sector its people deserve.

The Scottish Government has recently launched the latest wave of its Renters’ Rights campaign. We support the campaign because it highlights the importance of everyone knowing their rights and responsibilities, which is critical to a well-functioning rented sector. Across the Citizens Advice network in Scotland, every day we see examples of people facing challenges because of a lack of awareness of their rights and responsibilities. 

Among the 62,000 times we gave out housing advice over the last year, we helped people with an incredibly wide range of issues - from rent increases, to damp and mould and deposits, and everything in between. We’ve also seen landlords struggling financially as they’ve tried to keep rents low for their tenants through the dual crises of COVID and Cost of Living. There must be support for them too.

Looking to the year ahead, there’s a rare opportunity to help tackle one of the most complex housing issues: affordability. The Housing (Scotland) Bill proposes to introduce a framework for rent controls, which would link rent increases to inflation, something that has achieved a fair amount of consensus across landlord and tenant groups. We support this approach as long as it is kept under review to ensure rents remain affordable for tenants and it supports landlords to meet their costs. It’s important that we learn lessons from the rent caps introduced since 2020, but it’s also important that we move forward at pace. This is especially true due to the affordability struggles we know people face, coupled with the end of temporary protections against high rent increases which is due to happen at the end of March. The need for reform is urgent, and we need to get it right.

One of the key lessons we learned during the rent caps period is the importance of enforcement. Many people have no problem exercising their rights once they’re aware of them, but others don’t take action because they’re scared of losing their home. This does happen, as the nearly 300 people who came to us for advice on illegal eviction last year can tell you. Real progress cannot be made without better enforcement against bad practice.

Scotland can count having the best private rented sector among its accolades if it does the work. Legislation continues to move in the right way, but it needs to be backed up by enforcement and resources. Everyone wants to see a private rented sector which works well and benefits both tenants and landlords, but this can only be achieved if people are first aware of their rights and able to use them, and also aware of their responsibilities and willing to fulfil them. We can’t wait another 50 years to get there.

• Aoife Deery is senior social justice policy officer at Citizens Advice Scotland